PETA is Trying to Get Away with Murder

URGENT: Your Help Needed to Stop Legislation Which Would Allow PETA to Continue Killing Thousands of Animals Every Year.

At the behest of PETA, Virginia Delegate Bobby Orrock has just filed three bills to repeal SB 1381, a law passed last year designed to put PETA out of the killing business. That law, which required that Virginia shelters be “operated for the purpose of finding permanent adoptive homes” was designed to force PETA specifically, and private shelters generally, to do what the public already thinks “shelters” do: find homes for the animals they take in rather than kill them, as PETA currently does with thousands of animals every year, including healthy puppies and kittens and animals they have stolen from their families. Failure to do so would result in revocation of PETA’s license to operate a shelter.

Orrock’s legislation, HB 156 and HB 340, repeal that provision of SB 1381 by allowing “shelters” to be organized solely for the purpose of killing animals, with no requirement that they try to find animals homes.

Orrock’s third bill, HB 157, removes the power of the Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (VDACS), which oversees shelters in Virginia, to revoke a shelter’s license, even if they violate regulations governing the conduct of those shelters.

If HS 156, HS 157, or HB 340 pass, PETA will be allowed to continue killing thousands of animals a year with impunity, while other regressive shelters will have no legal incentive to follow the law and do their job of rehoming lost and stray animals.

This time, PETA is using donor funds to hire as many as seven lobbyists for Orrock’s bills (two directly and as many as five more for PETA shills), and unless Virginia residents speak out as they did last time, there is a good chance PETA will prevail. Thousands of lives every year hang in the balance as Orrock’s bills are designed to let PETA get away with murder. They will also set back the welfare of animals entering Virginia private shelters generally, as Orrock’s bills grant them the legal authority to kill animals without any effort at adoption and even to neglect and abuse them by eliminating the power of VDACS to revoke their shelter license if they do so. We must fight back.

What you can do to protect the animals of Virginia.

The only thing that can prevail against seven hired guns is the power of the people. If you live in Virginia, please contact your legislator and ask him/her to vote No on HB 156, HB 157, and HB 340. You can locate your delegate by clicking here.

In addition, please POLITELY tell Delegate Orrock that his bills will cause the deaths of thousands of animals every year and he should withdraw them:

Last year, after PETA was caught on videotape stealing a healthy, beloved dog from her porch and then later admitting to immediately killing her, the people and politicians of Virginia made their will clear: with overwhelming bipartisan support, SB 1381 passed – a bill designed to put PETA out of the killing business by making it illegal for Virginia shelters to do little more than kill homeless animals rather than find them homes. This year, you have introduced three bills seeking to overturn this important animal protection law, placing some the state’s neediest animals in mortal peril.

Your bills, HB 156 and HB 340, eviscerate SB 1381 by allowing “shelters” to be organized solely for the purpose of killing animals. With no requirement that they try to find animals homes, HB 156 and HB 340 are a cynical and devastating attempt to do nothing more than grant PETA the right to continue killing thousands of animals every year. But they will also grant other private shelters carte blanche to do the same. No longer will the law require private shelters to do the job the good people of Virginia expect and donate to them to do: rehome lost and stray dogs and cats with compassion and dedication.

Your third bill, HB 157, removes the power of the Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services which oversees shelters to stop a shelter from killing even if that shelter violates regulations governing the conduct of those shelters. It, too, is a cynical and devastating tool to allow private shelters generally, and PETA specifically, to act lawlessly in order to strip the state’s most vulnerable animals of vital, lifesaving protections.

Please withdraw these devastating, anti-animal bills immediately, and stop cozying up with an organization seeking the legal authority to round up and kill thousands of healthy Virginia animals every year, including puppies, kittens and animals stolen from their families.

If you do not live in Virginia, please share with those who do.

Learn more:

To see photos of healthy puppies and kittens PETA has killed, click here.

To read about PETA’s history of promising to find homes to people who then surrender those animals only to put those animals to death within minutes, click here.

“Irremediable physical suffering” means an animal who has a poor or grave prognosis for being able to live without severe, unremitting pain even with prompt, necessary, and comprehensive veterinary care.

In our ongoing effort to bring rigor, accountability and transparency to American shelters, we are proud to release “Defining No Kill,” a guide to prevent existing misuse and abuse of the term, and to ensure that even those shelters which have achieved success continue to innovate and modernize sheltering operations until all animals entering those shelters receive the loving care that is their birthright.

At the No Kill Advocacy Center, we come by the definition and guiding principles within this guide through several means: evidence, analysis, an awareness of how far the sheltering industry has progressed over the last decade, and an unequivocal commitment to the highest ideals of the animal protection movement. Nonetheless, we recognize that some of what we advocate involves discussions that many do not want to have. They will argue that the definition and guiding principles are premature and would be more politically convenient to embrace at a later date, when more or most communities are saving better than 95%. In other words, they will claim that we are setting the bar too high.

We disagree. Much of what our organization has advocated over the past decade was also greeted with admonition and decried as impossible but has since been adopted by hundreds of shelters and organizations nationwide, including some of the largest in the nation. There is no reason to assume that further innovation will not likewise receive the same eventual acceptance. Second, and more importantly, it is our duty to do so. With animal shelters throughout the nation claiming to be “No Kill” while simultaneously killing animals who are not irremediably suffering, ignoring the plight of these animals by allowing such shelters to claim success short of the actual goal line means animals not only needlessly lose their lives, but that we risk embodying the very things the No Kill movement was founded to combat: the stagnation and complacency with killing that characterized generations of shelter leaders following the industry’s founding.

The animals still being killed matter just as much as those who no longer face death, and for many of them, such as behaviorally challenged dogs, our duty is compounded by the fact that we—as humans—are often responsible for their condition through our neglect, abuse, and undersocialization. Relieving us of that burden by killing such animals does not result in redress for them.

This view does not mean we deny that some communities currently face infrastructure, legal, and other impediments to saving all these animals at this time, but rather that we do not allow such current limitations to hinder our vision, to stop us from setting aspirational goals and continually striving to improve the care of the animals served by working to overcome those obstacles. Indeed, the underpinning of the No Kill philosophy is that it goes beyond what is commonly assumed to be a practical necessity by focusing on what is morally right. It is, first and foremost, a movement of beliefs, of ethics, of what our vision of compassion is now and for the future. Its success is a result of a philosophy prompting us to do better; to embrace more progressive, life-affirming methods of sheltering that address the needs of animals still falling through the safety net of care. Failing to admit to the existence of such gaps means the impetus to eliminate them simply disappears.

Before many of us within the No Kill movement felt comfortable with the answer to questions of whether or not “feral” cats suffered on the street and whether or not No Kill was possible, we had already rejected mass killing. We had rejected practical explanations based on a “too many animals, not enough homes” calculus, or that a death was preferable to indeterminate future suffering. Even though early in the No Kill movement’s history, though the practical alternative of the No Kill Equation was yet unknown, the movement still recognized that whatever practical explanations there were to “justify” it, the killing was still wrong and had to be rejected. Moreover, calculations which elevate expediency over what is right are generally inaccurate and historically, have been used to excuse atrocities. Ethics will always trump the practical and the two are seldom so inexorably linked that an untoward action must follow some fixed practical imperative.

Every action taken by animal advocates must be subservient to preserving life, a principle that not only puts our movement in line with the successful rights-based movements that have come before ours, but is a philosophy that fosters the motivation necessary for us to figure out how we can bring our aspirations into reality. That is the job and duty of the animal protection movement, not—as it has historically done—to justify or enable the killing of animals with tired maxims that are not subjected to rigorous analysis.

A better and ethically consistent future in animal sheltering inevitably awaits us if the No Kill movement can continue to do what it has always done until every last animal entering our nation’s shelters—whatever the species, whatever the challenge—no longer faces killing: overcome the flawed but mutable traditions we have inherited from prior generations. The sooner we recognize the need for change and further innovation, the sooner we will find the motivation and tools to bring that brighter future into reality.

Despite PETA’s intense effort to derail the vote, the House of Representatives voted 95 to 2 in favor of the bill. The bill passed the Senate by an equally lopsided vote: 35 to 1. And the Governor signed it. Opposition to PETA’s roving death squads may just be the only true bipartisan issue in Virginia.

While VDACS sits on its hands, an additional 4,500 animals will be needlessly killed at the behest of Ingrid Newkirk’s dark and disturbing impulses and the families of the animals they round up and kill across Norfolk and surrounding areas will be left heartbroken. In other words, VDACS appears content to allow PETA to get away with murder.

What You Can Do:

Don’t let VDACS continue to get away with turning a blind eye and foot dragging. Please send a polite, but emphatic, email to Adams, Wilkes, and Bissett that you expect them to do their jobs and honor the intent of the legislature and the will of the people:

Comm. Sandra Adams: sandy.adams@vdacs.virginia.gov

Dr. Richard Wilkes: richard.wilkes@vdacs.virginia.gov

Dr. Carolynn Bissett: carolynn.bissett@vdacs.virginia.gov

Tell them that PETA kills 90% of the animals it takes in, that it steals people’s animals and puts them to death in violation of state laws and regulations, that it has always maintained it is “not in the home finding business” and has made virtually no effort to do so, and that it has a history of criminal conduct and lying to people in order to acquire and kill animals. As such, it cannot legally be licensed as a private shelter under SB 1381. And while you are at it, tell them that we should not have to wait years for VDACS to act while PETA kills thousands more.